Pages

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

The Socialist Party - The Class Party

The one thing most necessary in these times is to have a sound socialist party, pledged to the principles of socialism. It can not and will not fuse with any capitalist party, by whatever name it may be called. We are not after office, we want socialism. We care nothing about office except in so far as it represents the triumph of socialism. The Socialist Party is the party of the working class, the party of emancipation, made up of men and women who know their rights and scorn to compromise with their oppressors; who want no votes that can be bought and no support under any false pretence whatsoever. It is not begging for votes, nor asking votes, nor bargaining for votes. It is not in the vote market. It wants votes but only of those who recognise is as their party, and come to it of their own free will. To be sure we want all the votes we can get and all that are coming to us but only as a means of developing the political power of the working class in the struggle for industrial freedom, and not that we may indulge in the spoils of office. The Socialist Party stands squarely upon its Declaration of Principles and relies wholly upon the education of the working class. There is but one issue for the Socialist Party - the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class. The Socialist Party is the party of the workers, organised to express in political terms their determination to break their fetters and rise to the dignity of free men and women. In this party the workers must unite and develop their political power to conquer and abolish the capitalist political state and clear the way for industrial and social democracy. But the new order can never be established by mere votes alone.

The workers themselves must take the initiative in uniting their forces for effective economic and political action; the leaders will never do it for them. They must no longer suffer themselves to be deceived by the specious arguments of their betrayers who blatantly boast of their working class origins so that they may traffic in it and sell out the dupes who blindly follow them. The workers have never yet developed or made use of their political power. They have played the game of their masters for the benefit of the master class - and how many of them, disgusted with their own blind and stupid performance are renouncing politics and refusing to see any difference between the capitalist parties financed by the ruling class to perpetuate class rule and the Socialist Party organised as a means of wresting the control of government and of industry from the capitalists and making the working class of the world free.

The workers must learn to unite and vote together as a class in support of the Socialist Party, the party that represents them as a class, and when they do the State will pass into their hands and capitalism will fall to rise no more; private ownership will give way to common ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wage system will disappear, and with it the ignorance and poverty, misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds; the working class will awake to a new dawn in human progress and in the civilisation of mankind. There is one fact, and a very important one, that we would impress upon fellow-workers, and that is the necessity for revolutionary working class political action. No one will attempt to dispute the fact that our interests as workers are identical. If our interests are identical, then we ought to unite. If our interests are identical, it follows that we ought to belong to the same party with a goal to stir the people, to appeal to their higher, better selves, to set them thinking for themselves, and to hold ever before them the ideal of mutual aid and good will, based upon shared interests, is to render real service to the cause of humanity.

Workers who vote for the parties of the capitalism do worse than throw away their vote. They are deserters of their class and their own worst enemy, though they may be in blissful ignorance of the fact that they are false to themselves and their fellow workers, and that sooner or later they must reap what they have sowed. The Socialist Party points out to them clearly why their situation is hopeless under capitalism, how they are robbed and exploited.

The Socialist Party respects the effort of our fellow-workers, no matter how misguided, to better social conditions, but we have no patience for the frauds and quacks who betray their trusting victims to the class that robs them without pity. There are “socialists” who advocate palliatives for no other purpose than to emasculate socialism and they dare not offend the capitalist exploiters, for their incomes and jobs depend upon their treason whom they shed crocodile tears.

For the first time in human history, the exploited class have the political power in their own hands to accomplish by peaceful means their own emancipation. No longer can the political harlots of capitalism betray the workers with election issues manufactured for that purpose. The Socialist Party offers the only remedy, which is socialism.

It is impossible to compromise a principle, and the Socialist Party is committed to a certain principle. To compromise principle is to court death and disaster. It is better to be true to a principle and to stand alone and be able to look yourself in the face without shame, far better to be in a hopeless minority than to be in a great popular and powerful majority of the unthinking.